Happy May Day!

If April showers bring May flowers,

What do May flowers bring?







Inspiration for quilts!

Folk Art Flowers

24" x 30"

© DJB, 1995

Thank you jmbmommy for allowing me to use your amazing flower photos. Please visit Jessica's blog HERE.

Spring Has Sprung ~ Sort Of

"Possibly God knows that if spring came all at once, we should die of it."

Gladys Taber
Stillmeadow Sampler


Yesterday was my first outing in four months. The day was cold and damp, so I dressed in a turtleneck sweater plus a jacket to keep out the chill. As we made the awkward transfer from wheelchair to car, I wished I had grabbed a pair of gloves as well. It's funny, our weather seems to have changed little since the day I came home from the hospital in December.

We've had some shorts and tee shirts weather, but it's been interspersed with overnight frosts, blustery winds and plenty of rain. Guess that's the nature of spring ~ fickle.

Our trees, bushes and grass are just starting to green up. I love spring's first green! It's such an in your face color. It's bold and loud and tart and assertive. It will not be ignored! But it lasts such a short time. I'm glad I chose this week to venture out.

This is the springiest quilt I have in my collection. In spite of its pastel colors, it seems loud and tart and assertive too. Quilts made using Gwen Marston's Liberated Quiltmaking techniques all end up with a bit of attitude.

The fabrics in this quilt are scraps of 1940's prints that my friend, Betty, gave me. I was able to eke out a few Shoo Fly blocks but near the end, I found myself rummaging through the trash for enough scraps to make a sawtooth border, or as Gwen would describe it, minimal sawtooth.

Shoo Fly

29" square

© DJB, 1997

All Shook Up!

Early yesterday morning, we woke to the sound of doors and windows rattling. Strange, I thought. Was it thunder? A tornado? The rumbling only lasted a few seconds but was disconcerting nonetheless. As it turned out, an earthquake in southern Illinois sent tremors as far north as Wisconsin! 

In tribute to this rare occurrence, here's a quilt I made called "All Shook Up."

It's a variation of the classic Streak of Lightning design made from half square triangle units offset to create the lively zig-zag pattern.

Enlarge photo for more detail.

I don't recall which came first, the bright colored solids or my choice of backing fabric. Either way, Milly Churbuck's hand-dyed cottons and Michael Miller’s “Dysfunctional Family” comic strip fabric were a perfect pairing!

                                   "All Shook Up"

18" x 24"

2005

In other news, an exciting package is on its way here from the Netherlands! I'm the lucky winner of “Little Faithy” the prairie doll made by Lucy van der Sluis of Quilting with the Past II. I can't wait to meet her and will be sure to introduce you the moment she arrives.

Snow Bunnies

Yesterday morning, I woke to icy snowflakes pelting the windows. By noon, the snow plow had made two trips down our street. And even though the “Winter Storm Warning” was canceled later that evening, the plows made one final pass, dropping a precautionary load of sand and salt on our icy roads.


The Easter bunny may wish he was a snowshoe hare when he delivers treats to our neck of the woods. Such is Spring in Chicagoland.

Happy Easter!

This is my brain!

Do you remember that 1987 anti-drug campaign with the fried egg? You know the one: "This is your brain. This is drugs. This is your brain on drugs." I wondered if I could find a similar metaphor to illustrate how MS affects the body. I did; this little quilt represents me ~ me with MS.

Let’s say those dizzying squares of psychedelic fabric are nerve cells in my brain or spinal cord. Some of them have been damaged by my body’s own immune system. The resulting scars or lesions impede the messages my brain sends to other parts of my body. Sometimes these messages (the black sashing strips) get garbled; sometimes they don’t get through at all. In other words, my brain might want to quilt, or walk, or eat soup with a spoon, but if the message can’t reach the appropriate muscles to perform the task, it ain’t gonna happen!

See those wonky quilt blocks? They represent symptoms I deal with every day: numbness and tingling, poor balance, weakness in the limbs, muscle spasms, fatigue, sensitivity to heat, loss of bladder control. Just as each of these quilt blocks varies a bit from the others, my symptoms vary from day to day. Not only are they unpredictable, they also differ from those of someone else with MS.

Let’s see, how can I tie in that big purple border? I know. Those strips symbolize everyone who supports me: family, friends, doctors, therapists -- all vigilant caregivers who manage my daily needs. Their love surrounds me and frames each challenging day of my life. If you’d like to become a member of my support team, please consider making a donation to the National MS Society HERE.

Feeling Wonky

This is MS Awareness Week, and many crafters, quilters, and bloggers with MS have been asked to share their stories. particularly the impact it To illustrate some of my early symptoms, I pulled out a quilt I was working on just before my diagnosis.
  here's the quilespecially how it impacts their creative endeavors. I did one better, I dug out the I was working on when I first began experiencing symptoms

Block Party

37" x 51"

machine pieced and quilted

© Diane Burdin, 1997

The mid 1990's were a particularly stressful time for me. Since stress aggravates MS, I’m not surprised that it lead to my first serious exacerbation, a curious numbness and tingling in my arm that lasted for months. Over time, other unusual symptoms began to appear: fatigue, dizziness, depression, all of which my doctor attributed to stress. His advice? Slow down. Make a concerted effort to relax. See a therapist!

Meanwhile, some friends had organized a quilt challenge. I joined in, hoping the creative exercise would help me relax. Typical of these design challenges, the theme fabric was a hard to use print,  a wild "op art" pattern that made me dizzy if I looked at it too long. That became the theme of my quilt -- feeling "wonky."

It was the perfect opportunity to try Gwen Marsten's liberated piecing techniques for constructing wonky quilt blocks. I started with houses:

My first attempt wasn't nearly wonky enough.

Now I was getting the hang of it. No right angles here!

I tried a church with stained glass windows and a wonky sun.



Here's our house, with William peeking out the upstairs window.

Once I'd made enough blocks for a little neighborhood, I arranged and rearranged them like pieces of a puzzle. If a block was too small, I added to it. Several house blocks, for example, were enlarged by adding trees. If a block was too big, I simply trimmed it down.

For interest, I scattered bits of theme fabric throughout the quilt and also included other types of blocks -- all "liberated" versions of traditional quilt patterns: log cabin, nine patch, flying geese and stars. 

The thing about making a quilt this way is, you never have more than a general idea of how it will look when finished. Much like Multiple Sclerosis, it's hard to predict the course it will take. When faced with a challenging fabric or a challenging symptom of MS, the strategies for coping are much the same -- add a little something, trim a little something, adapt, change the plan. Chances are, you'll still create something beautiful.

UGH!

This may be the best opportunity, in what remains of our Midwestern Winter, to post this poem. The forecast for tonight is 3-5 more inches of snow, and for now at least, I'm feeling like this poor desicated little leaf:

Last Leaf

One withered leaf still clings to its barren branch,
Though winter’s wind is harsh and frigid cold
Should free the fragile stem’s tenacious grasp.
What keeps it clutching to a lifeless limb,
When its green and supple beauty is long gone?
Perhaps the memory of its verdant past,
Or fear of the uncertainty to come.

© DJB, 2004